Monster Hunter fans at the Tokyo Game Show get an early look at the New Nintendo 3DS. Ko Sasaki/WIRED
CHIBA, Japan — Nintendo doesn’t attend the Tokyo Game Show, but its latest gaming platform made an appearance anyway.
Nintendo will release the New Nintendo 3DS, in two different sizes, on October 11 in Japan. Upgrades include more powerful internals for enhanced graphics on certain games, a second analog stick, and wider viewing angles for its signature 3-D display. WIRED took it for a test drive at the Capcom booth on the Tokyo Game Show floor, where it was playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.
The upgrades work as advertised, but other than that, it’s a very similar experience to the 3DS you already own.
The 3-D screen is a big improvement. I usually play with the 3-D turned off, because I hate how the illusion breaks itself if you move your head slightly. New 3DS has a face-tracking sensor, so it can tell where your eyes are, and it adjusts the 3-D display to match your perspective.
I was able to tilt the screen left and right, even up and down, without the image breaking down into a blurry mess. For fun, I would look away from the screen, only to look back and watch the image snap into position. (I can only imagine what the Capcom staff thought of me.)
The addition of a second analog control stick, above the buttons on the unit’s right-hand side, is the biggest potential game-changer. After 10 years of offering directional controls on only the left side of its Nintendo DS family of hardware, and creating a cumbersome add-on for players who wanted a second stick to control the camera in games like Monster Hunter, Nintendo 3DS finally has a set of controls to match home consoles’.
Nintendo’s New 3DS LL, playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Nintendo
Calling it a “stick” might be going too far. It’s more like the mouse pointer nub that’s set into the keyboards of many laptop computers. It doesn’t tilt at all when you push it.
The—stick? nub?—feels out of place, in relation to where it sits next to the buttons. The PlayStation 4 controller, the Xbox controller, even the PlayStation Vita all feel comfortable in my hands whether my thumb is resting on the right stick or the buttons. But with New 3DS, the nub is just a bit too far out of the way to reach comfortably. (I tried the XL size of the new handheld, so the smaller size might end up feeling more comfortable.)
The New 3DS also sports a second pair of shoulder buttons, which means there are now four buttons on the top of the unit that you press with your index fingers. The four buttons feel distinct, though it’s easy to forget the new additions are even there. What better compliment is there for superfluous hardware changes than “if you don’t need it, you won’t notice it?”
I say “superfluous,” because who knows how many games will actually take advantage of all these extra switches?
Capcom’s latest version of Monster Hunter is one such title, and it launches in Japan the same day as the New 3DS. Yet when I played it on both a New 3DS and an Old 3DS at Tokyo Game Show, my experience barely changed.
Yes, the right stick is a better camera controller than the virtual controls on the 3DS touch screen. But Monster Hunter, by design, already lets you “lock on” to targets and quickly center the camera on your prey. The extra shoulder buttons didn’t have any functions assigned to them. The improved 3-D was nice, but I’m not sure it’s nice enough to get me to switch back from playing all 3DS games in the 2-D mode.
Nintendo has announced that it will create software that will only function on the New 3DS, the first one being a port of the acclaimed Wii role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles. But at launch, if Monster Hunter is the big draw, then I’m not sold. If I were in the market for a 3DS, I’d go for the latest model. But as an early adopter who has already bought three different iterations of the 3DS hardware since it launched in 2011, New 3DS isn’t that attractive to me yet.
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